A collection of opinionated commentaries on culture, politics and religion compiled predominantly from an American viewpoint but tempered by a global vision. My Armwood Opinion Youtube Channel @ YouTube I have a Jazz Blog @ Jazz
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Emanuel’s departure — and Rouse’s ascension to the job, on a temporary basis — have been widely expected.

In an odd exchange with reporters on Thursday, White House press secretaryRobert Gibbs would say only that Obama will make a “personnel announcement” Friday morning in the East Room.

“The president will have a personnel announcement tomorrow and at that point he will deliver that news,” Gibbs said when pressed by reporters about the nature of the announcement. Obama will make two announcements, he added, presumably that Emanuel is out and Rouse is in.

Gibbs then went on to praise Rouse, without ever confirming that he’s in line for the job. “The type of trust the president and others in the administration have in Pete is enormous,” Gibbs said.

Is the Republican candidate for governor of New York a racist, sexist, pornography-loving creep? Or are there other, more benign, explanations for the stomach-turning e-mails distributed by Carl Paladino?

One of the things that can happen in the news business is that some portion of a story becomes so vile, so offensive, it is virtually impossible to effectively recount or describe. Reporters keep their distance. Editors lunge for the delete button.

Such is the case with the images and videos forwarded by Mr. Paladino to a wide variety of people. The public should know about these mailings, and Mr. Paladino should give a full, thoughtful explanation of why he trafficked in such filth.

Example: A photo showing a group of black men trying to get out of the way of an airplane that is apparently moving across a field. The caption reads: “Run niggers, run.”

Example: A doctored photo of President and Mrs. Obama showing the president in a stereotypical pimp’s costume holding the hand of the first lady, who is dressed as a prostitute in a grotesquely revealing outfit.

Example: A video clip of a nude couple engaged in intercourse with the title: “Miss France [expletive].” Mr. Paladino characterized it as “a keeper.”

Example: An image showing a woman performing a sexual act on a horse.

There are many more. Mr. Paladino has acknowledged forwarding the e-mails, which he said was evidence of “poor judgment” on his part. But that’s not sufficient. The e-mails raise legitimate questions about the fitness of the sender to hold the highest office in the state, and Mr. Paladino should feel an obligation to put those questions to rest.

“Slavery was an evil and inhumane practice that reduced people to property,” the first-term governor informed his audience at the historically black college. “It left a stain on the soul of this nation.”

These comments echo similar ones he made in April, during the thick of the Confederate History Month controversy. A week into the month, he issued a written statement in which he apologized to “any fellow Virginian who has been offended or disappointed.”

It's about time. In Germany the Germans do not celebrate a Nazi history month. The Confederates were colonists and Americans with similar attitudes and practices to the Nazis. They engaged in the murder of million of humans in the middle passage and the enslavement, then segregation of many millions more. They engaged in their murderous and barbaric behavior for over 300 years. America had the most brutal slave system in the history of mankind. We should celebrate their final defeat.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's health care overhaul has divided the nation, and Republicans believe their call for repeal will help them win elections in November. But the picture's not that clear cut.

A new AP poll finds that Americans who think the law should have done more outnumber those who think the government should stay out of health care by 2-to-1.

"I was disappointed that it didn't provide universal coverage," said Bronwyn Bleakley, 35, a biology professor from Easton, Mass.

More than 30 million people would gain coverage in 2019 when the law is fully phased in, but another 20 million or so would remain uninsured. Bleakley, who was uninsured early in her career, views the overhaul as a work in progress.

The poll found that about four in 10 adults think the new law did not go far enough to change the health care system, regardless of whether they support the law, oppose it or remain neutral. On the other side, about one in five say they oppose the law because they think the federal government should not be involved in health care at all.

Christine O’Donnell doesn’t understand why monkeys can’t turn into people right before her eyes.

Bill Maher continued his video torment of O’Donnell by releasing another old clip of her on his HBO show on Friday night, this time showing one in which she argued that “Evolution is a myth.”

Maher shot back, “Have you ever looked at a monkey?” To which O’Donnell rebutted, “Why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?”

The comedian has a soft spot for the sweet-faced Republican Senate candidate from Delaware, but as he told me on Friday, it’s “powerful stupid to think primate evolution could happen fast enough to observe it. That’s bacteria.

“I find it so much more damaging than the witch stuff because she could be in a position to make decisions about scientific issues, like global warming and stem cells, and she thinks primate evolution can happen in a week and mice have human brains.”

In the Republican primary, O’Donnell beat Congressman Mike Castle, who had the temerity to support stem-cell research and acknowledge global warming. O’Donnell’s numbers are dropping, while Castle is still beating the Democratic candidate, Chris Coons, by almost 20 points in a theoretical matchup.

The field of human-animal experiments is dubbed “chimera” research, named for the she-monster in Greek mythology that has a lion’s head, a goat’s body and a serpent’s tail.

Dr. Irving Weissman, director of Stanford’s Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, did the first experiments injecting human brain-forming stem cells into the brains of immune-deficient mice 10 years ago.

He assured me that the mice did not suddenly start acting human. “There were no requests for coffee from Minnie,” he said. “The total number of human brain cells in the mouse brain was less than one in a thousand. I don’t think we would get a mouse with a full human brain. And even if the mouse made it to a human mouse it would still have a mouse-brain offspring.”

In 2007, the Southern Poverty Law Center called Long "one of the most virulently homophobic black leaders in the religiously based anti-gay movement."In 2004, Long led a march in Atlanta against homosexuality.Long, who is on his second marriage, lives a lavish lifestyle, which includes a $350,000 Bentley and a $1.4 million home.The church was the site of the 2006 funeral of Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr.'s widow, attended by President George W. Bush. Then-NAACP Chair Julian Bond refused to attend the funeral at the church, calling Long "a raving homophobe."

TOKYO — A diplomatic showdown between Japan and China that began two weeks ago with the arrest of the captain of a Chinese trawler near disputed islands ended Friday when Tokyo accepted Beijing’s demands for his immediate release, a concession that appeared to mark a humiliating retreat in a Pacific test of wills.

Japan freed the captain, Zhan Qixiong, 41, who left Saturday on a chartered flight sent by the Chinese government to take him home. Mr. Zhan had been held by the Japanese authorities since his boat collided with Japanese patrol vessels on Sept. 7 near uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, and Japan had insisted that he would be prosecuted.

His release handed a significant victory to Chinese leaders, who have ratcheted up the pressure on Japan with verbal threats and economic sanctions.

“It certainly appears that Japan gave in,” said Hiroshi Nakanishi, a professor of international relations at Kyoto University. “This is going to raise questions about why Japan pushed the issue in the first place, if it couldn’t follow through with meeting China’s challenges.”

The climb down was the latest indicator of the shifting balance of power in Asia. China this year surpassed Japan as the world’s second largest economy and had already become Japan’s biggest export market. Japan, mired in extended political uncertainty and economic malaise, has had a succession of weak prime ministers who have struggled to assert its interests in a region focused mainly on a resurgent China.

China on Saturday restated its claims to the disputed islands and in a statement demanded an apology and compensation. “Such an act seriously infringed upon China’s territorial sovereignty and violated the human rights of Chinese citizens,” the statement said.

At the outset, Japan had made an uncharacteristic display of political backbone by detaining the captain, when in the past it had simply chased away Chinese vessels that approached too close to the islands, which are claimed by both countries but administered by Japan. Apparently angered by a rising number of incursions by Chinese fishing boats in recent years, Tokyo initially appeared determined to demonstrate to Beijing its control of the islands, analysts and diplomats said.

Instead, the move unleashed a furious diplomatic assault from China. Beijing cut off ministerial-level talks on issues like joint energy development, and curtailed visits to Japan by Chinese tourists. The fact that the detention took place on Sept. 8, the anniversary of Japan’s 1931 invasion of northeast China, spurred scattered street protests and calls by nationalistic Chinese bloggers to take a firm stand against Tokyo.

In recent days, China stepped up its intimidation. Chinese customs officials appeared to block crucial exports to Japan of rare earths, which are metals vital to Japan’s auto and electronics industries. Then on Thursday, four Japanese construction company employees were detained in the Chinese province of Hebei.

In the end, diplomats and analysts said Japan was forced to recognize that taking the next step of charging the captain and putting him on trial would result in a serious deterioration of ties with China, Japan’s biggest trading partner.

“At this point, Japan had only one choice,” said a Western diplomat in Beijing, who spoke on the usual diplomatic condition of anonymity. “It had to charge the captain, or it would have to climb down.”

The super-rich got even wealthier this year, and yet most of them are paying even fewer taxes to support the eduction, job training, and job creation of the rest of us. According to Forbes magazine's annual survey, just released, the combined net worth of the 400 richest Americans climbed 8% this year, to $1.37 trillion. Wealth rose for 217 members of the list, while 85 saw a decline.

For example, Charles and David Koch, the energy magnates who are pouring vast sums of money into Republican coffers and sponsoring tea partiers all over America, each gained $5.5 billion of wealth over the past year. Each is now worth $21.5 billion.

Wall Street continued to dominate the list; 109 of the richest 400 are in finance or investments.

From another survey we learn that the 25 top hedge-fund managers got an average of $1 billion each, but paid an average of 17 percent in taxes (because so much of their income is considered capital gains, taxed at 15 percent thanks to the Bush tax cuts).

The rest of America got poorer, of course. The number in poverty rose to a post-war high. The median wage continues to deteriorate. And some 20 million Americans don't have work.

Only twice before in American history has so much been held by so few, and the gap between them and the great majority been a chasm -- the late 1920s, and the era of the robber barons in the 1880s.

And yet the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which conferred almost all their benefits on the rich, continue.

Democrats have decided to delay voting on whether to extend them for the top 2 percent of Americans or for the bottom 98 percent until after the mid-term elections.

Democrats have thereby given up a defining issue that could have enabled them to show the big story of the last three decades -- the accumulation of almost all the gain from economic growth at the top -- and to make a start at reversing it.

When will they ever learn?

Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.

Boy, I really hate it when American judges try to impose harsh Islamic sharia law. You know, with all those grisly lashings, stonings and beheadings. What's that you say? No such thing is happening, and you wonder where I got such a crazy idea? Why, Newt Gingrich told me.

On Saturday, speaking at the conservative Values Voter Summit, Gingrich issued a thunderous call for action against an imminent threat that exists only in his fevered imagination -- or, perhaps, in his political machinations.

"We should have a federal law that says sharia law cannot be recognized by any court in the United States," Gingrich declared, to a standing ovation.

Okay, but would this include Judge Judy? Because I've always suspected that when she gets really mad, and she snaps the heads off both the plaintiff and the defendant, she might be slipping a little sharia into the American subconscious -- you know, preparing an unsuspecting nation for the real deal. Maybe we need another law that covers fake judges on daytime television, with punishments that begin with flogging.

But seriously, folks, Newt says we have to halt the insidious encroachment of sharia law, and we have to halt it here and now. In July, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute, he went on at great length about the supposed sharia menace, which he sees as part of a "stealth" campaign to impose Islam on all of us.

"Stealth jihadis use political, cultural, societal, religious, intellectual tools; violent jihadis use violence," Gingrich said at AEI. "But in fact they're both engaged in jihad, and they're both seeking to impose the same end state, which is to replace Western civilization with a radical imposition of sharia."

He threw in a perfunctory disclaimer -- that there is "a sharp distinction between those Muslims who live in the modern world and those Muslims who would radically change the modern world" -- and then proceeded with a speech that essentially paints Islam as the new Red Menace. The "stealth jihadis," I suppose, must be like the "known communists" on the list in Sen. Joseph McCarthy's hand.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Like other technology and communications companies, we regularly receive requests from government agencies around the world to remove content from our services, or provide information about users of our services and products. This map shows the number of requests that we received in six-month blocks with certain limitations.

We’re still learning the best way to collect and present this information. We’ll continue to improve this tool and fine-tune the types of data we display.

Canada, Mexico, France, Spain, South Korea and Japan are included in this list. I experienced this type of blocking when I lived in South Korea when I tried to look for at a North Korean site mentioned on the Rachel Maddow Show. Censorship is the first weapon that tyrants use.

Monday, September 20, 2010

Intelligence does not assure trust in the world of politics, or outside of it. Newt Gingrich has proven this with his hectoring xenophobia toward Muslims when the iron was hot among those on the extreme right. The former speaker of the House could have instead offered a good cold bucket of water to opponents of the proposed Cordoba House project, but he did not. Some assume that his outrage, so perfect for Fox News, was no more than a cynical quest for power among Republicans, perhaps enough to get the GOP nomination for President in 2012.

His willful distortions of fact about Muslims and their intentions for the proposed Muslim community center were disgusting. But he continues. Gingrich knows that there are those in the nation who are so deluded by their ignorance that they actually believe American Muslims could ignore the national laws and impose Islamic law. There is no doubt that he knows that's impossible, but he keeps saying it nonetheless.

Of late, Robert A. George, a conservative and libertarian journalist, poured intellectual hot coals down the back of Gingrich's pants. He was disturbed by Gingrich's embracing a wacked-out theory - first proposed by Dinesh D'Souza in a Forbes cover story - about Barack Obama having absorbed his purported disdain for Western values from his Kenyan father.

George, who is black, worked for Gingrich following the 1994 midterm elections. Due to that career choice, George has taken his lumps from blacks and liberals in cable news and print for not embracing left-wing ideals and, therefore, "betraying" his race.

George writes that the Gingrich we now see is not the man for whom he worked and who proved himself, over and over, neither afraid of a political brawl nor at a loss for solid beliefs well-grounded in scholarship.

During the Republican squabbles over the loss to Barack Obama, Gingrich transcended the verbal and intellectual mud-slinging, often seeming quite reasonable. He did not submit to the levels of demonization that became part of the act for Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. He seemed wrong for the budding Tea Party movement.

That Gingrich has taken a powder. Eventually, Gingrich leapt ahead of others on the right who were wary of being connected to (and diminished by) association with the rage heating up at the Republican margins; he rolled up his sleeves, left his principles behind, and went along with them.

This is not unusual and has too long and varied a pedigree to lay out right here, but we should never forget the way the Democratic Party was forced to kowtow to elected rednecks who kept their supporters by protecting Southern racism. Gingrich remembers how well the "Southern strategy" of President Richard Nixon worked. It attracted disgruntled Southern donkeys willing to become Republicans as long as the red in their necks was respected.

So Gingrich's change of tune is another disappointing example of how the possibility of rising to a position of power can intellectually deform a person.

Time takes principles and vitality down the drain. It is as much the enemy of a politician as it is the elemental fact movie stars dread every morning as they look into the mirror. In the case of Newt Gingrich, the question is: If you will not try to grab power now, when will you?

Plato once wrote of a man who had to devour his children in order to achieve his goal. If Gingrich chooses to see the electorate as his children, he appears to have decided that, at the end of the day, he can wipe the blood off his teeth.

Many Americans have suggested that more moderate Muslims should stand up to extremists, speak out for tolerance, and apologize for sins committed by their brethren.

That’s reasonable advice, and as a moderate myself, I’m going to take it. (Throat clearing.) I hereby apologize to Muslims for the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness that has lately been directed at you. The venom on the airwaves, equating Muslims with terrorists, should embarrass us more than you. Muslims are one of the last minorities in the United States that it is still possible to demean openly, and I apologize for the slurs.

I’m inspired by another journalistic apology. The Portland Press Herald in Maine published an innocuous front-page article and photo a week ago about 3,000 local Muslims praying together to mark the end of Ramadan. Readers were upset, because publication coincided with the ninth anniversary of 9/11, and they deluged the paper with protests.

So the newspaper published a groveling front-page apology for being too respectful of Muslims. “We sincerely apologize,” wrote the editor and publisher, Richard Connor, and he added: “we erred by at least not offering balance to the story and its prominent position on the front page.” As a blog by James Poniewozik of Time paraphrased it: “Sorry for Portraying Muslims as Human.”

I called Mr. Connor, and he seems like a nice guy. Surely his front page isn’t reserved for stories about Bad Muslims, with articles about Good Muslims going inside. Must coverage of law-abiding Muslims be “balanced” by a discussion of Muslim terrorists?

Ah, balance — who can be against that? But should reporting of Pope Benedict’s trip to Britain be “balanced” by a discussion of Catholic terrorists in Ireland? And what about journalism itself?

What a nut! The backlash to Obama's presidential election is producing an unbelievably sick crop of Republican candidates. America will be the laughing-stock of the world if either O'Donnell in Delaware, Paladino in New York or Rand Paul in Kentucky is elected.
John h. Armwood

I dare this racist former marine general to compare I Q scores with me since he thinks black people are inferior to whites. These conservatives are un-American, they do not believe in our constitution. I am waiting for them to start wearing brown shirts. There have been Muslims in America since 1614. President Thomas Jefferson had a well read copy of the Koran in his personal library. Do they even know there is a subject called history, that some people actually study?John H. Armwood

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Democratic operatives are ablaze with excitement over the victory of two particularly dubious Tea Party candidates in Tuesday’s Republican primaries, envisioning smoother paths to victory in the races for governor in New York and United Statessenator in Delaware. But for voters of all stripes, Tuesday’s primaries should illuminate the growling face of a new fringe in American politics — and provide the incentive for level-headed voters to become enthusiastic about the midterm election.

Republican leaders have to decide if they want the tiny fraction of furious voters who have showed up at the primary polls to steer them into the swamp for years ahead. They have a chance to repudiate the worst of the Tea Party crowd and show that they can govern without appealing to the basest political instincts. So far, they have preferred to greedily capitalize on the nuclear energy in the land without considering its destructive effects.

Democrats, especially beleaguered incumbents and the White House, need to counter the toxic message of the Tea Party so voters have an alternative.

For both parties and certainly the broad swath of independent voters, defeating this new crop of Tea Party nominees has become imperative to avoid the sense of national embarrassment from each divisive and offensive utterance, each wacky policy proposal.

Take the new Republican nominee for United States senator from Delaware, Christine O’Donnell. She founded a group called the Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth, with a curious focus on sexual purity, and claimed there was scientific evidence that God created the world in six 24-hour periods. She lied for years about being a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University, having earned a degree only in recent weeks, 17 years after she left campus. She has no steady source of income and has a substantial trail of unpaid bills, battles with the Internal Revenue Service and questionable use of campaign donations for personal expenses.

Ms. O’Donnell defeated Mike Castle, a veteran congressman and example of the moderate and conciliatory approach that Northeast Republicans once brought to Washington. Her campaign ridiculed him for being 71 years old with a history of heart problems. Ms. O’Donnell called Mr. Castle “unmanly.”

Or consider Carl Paladino, the Republicans’ new nominee for governor of New York, who has transfigured the state’s justifiable disgust with Albany into a malevolent snarl at the world. It is one thing to promise to shake up state government; it is very much another to thuggishly proclaim that he intends to clean up Albany “with a baseball bat” and turn the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, upside down to get his blood flowing and then send him “to Attica.” This is the man who has vowed to send welfare recipients to state prisons to pick up their checks and be given lessons in hygiene. He has defended an ally’s comparison of Mr. Silver to Hitler or the Antichrist and is known for forwarding e-mail messages to friends with racist or pornographic images.

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"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways—the point however is to change it,"-Karl Marx - "If you are neutral in situations of injustice you have chosen the side of the oppressor" -Desmond Tutu - "If you save one life you save all the world" -The Talmud - "Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" — Isaac Asimov - Practice is the preparation for transcendence. - Cecil Taylor " - Just by virtue of their ideological stance, liberals can tolerate difference, they can tolerate not knowing, wondering ‘it could be this, it could be that.’ They can tolerate someone saying, ‘you’ve got it wrong.’ Liberals are just more open to all of that. It’s less of a problem, it’s less of a concern. They’re much more open to compromise, more open to experience—what would otherwise be threatening to people would not be as threatening because of their ideological disposition." - Scott Eidelman,